Introduction

This page is meant to list a lot of the projects Arch developers keep busy with. Yes, there are things to do outside of packaging. If you are interested in anything, this page should help you get in contact with the right people. If you are looking for something to do, this is always a good place to start.

Some of these projects have dedicated discussion areas, such as the release engineering and pacman development mailing lists. Other ones are less formal- some of the communication may just be person to person emails or on the arch-dev lists if it appeals to a larger crowd. Remember that if you are interested in these less-formal projects, you should let the names listed below know so they will include you on any communication regarding the project.

TODO Items

dbscripts: Add community repo support to db-move to let us move packages from community to core/extra and vice versa.

dbscripts: Add community support to the sourceballs script - needs additional logic to use alternate SVN repos

dbscripts: When a package is completely removed from repo, e.g. amarok-base, its sourceball remains on the server. I have a script for that. Will send it soon. Snowman 04:32, 6 October 2009 (EDT)

dbscripts/devtools: Add support for using different compression types for packages. This way we could migrate to xz compression while keeping the old gz compressed packages.

dbscripts/devtools: Implement a common storage dir for packages and just link from the repo dirs. This way mirrors wont need to download every package again when it is moved from testing to extra/core.

Mirror Control

Keep track of existing mirrors and ensure they are doing their job as good as possible (e.g. staying current). Ensure we have up to date contact information for as many mirrors as possible. Work on a tiered mirror system to relieve some stress from our primary rsync server.

Automated tests

Packaging Automation

Automatic package generation based on changes in svn trunk. Errors should be reported to some mailing list, successful builds moved to a staging directory. Some guidelines of package moving into [extra]/[testing] should be created, for [core] we can use the current signoff procedure.

Server Administration

Developer Communication Team

This isn't quite infrastructure, but it almost belongs here. Responsible for organizing developer meetings and making sure people attempt to be present; you newer guys might have no idea, but we used to actually schedule and have 80% of the developer staff present in IRC for 1-2 hour meetings. Responsible for any other coordination between developers, TUs, and maybe even the front page news.

Package Review Team

Some packages in our repos receive little attention due to not being updated frequently. These need to be checked for being able to build (especially after major toolchain updates) and compliance with current packaging standards. It would be good for packages that have not been rebuilt in a long time to be rebuilt to take advantage of new optimisations.

Andrea Scarpino

Orphan Team

Responsible for caring for those packages that no one seems to want and are being neglected. This may involve adoption by themselves or finding a foster caregiver, moving them to a willing maintainer in [community], or sending them to the AUR (or the trash).

namcap

netcfg

srcpac

Andrea Scarpino

Pacman

Development Team

This team is responsible for general development, including new features and bugfixes, for the package manager that is a core part of Arch. Although many people contribute patches and code, the people listed here are generally the people that will be reviewing patches and making the final say as to what gets in the codebase.

Translation Team

Pacman, as of September 2009, has been translated to 15 languages. The upkeep and maintenance of these translations is pretty much a job in itself, with the times immediately preceding a release being the busiest. Ideally this team is responsible for creating a translations branch when a string freeze is set, and then takes incoming translations, ensures they are valid, and merges them into their branch. When a release is not imminent, their focus may be on improving clarity and usefulness of existing messages.